Team Organization Types in Direct Offshoring

In direct offshoring, there are two different types of team organization. One of these types, the dedicated team, domestically takes care of the project management, while the entire software development team is located abroad. The dedicated team is organized to clearly divide up the various responsibilities and assignments into areas of planning, modeling and analysis, and into database and software development.

With regards to cost structure, you can typically expect labor-intensive work along with a lucrative cost structure. You take into account that this distribution generates the optimal combination of both knowledge and implementation. Since requirements analysis, software design and project planning are carried out domestically, or even at the client's office, other critical project specific requirements can be identified, planned and then properly monitored as implemented throughout the course of the project.

Software Offshoring Types

Dedicated Team Project Organization

The Comelio employees in India, who comprise the offshore team of a project, stay in direct contact with the client by different modes of telecommunication (e.g., telephone, video conferencing, chat). It's certainly plausible for the offshore team members to visit the client's location in Europe or the U.S., but such this is typically reserved for team leaders, at times when the specifics of a project are particularly complex. Make note that task distribution and feedback with the offshore team members are usually conducted by means of telecommunication.

The use of intermediaries does not apply in this case, in contrast to indirect offshoring by Comelio GmbH Europe and Comelio, Inc., in the U.S. Here, the contract is made directly with Comelio IT Technologies & Publishing Pvt. Ltd. in India. However, the client can choose to carry out the commercial and contractual arrangements with Comelio's two other offices. In this case, the client avoids any foreign legal obligations, instead remaining under domestic jurisdiction.

Dedicated Team Setup for Software-Offshoring in India

Pre-Requisites and Success Factors

To achieve efficiency in offshoring, both client and intermediary should demonstrate expertise in executing international projects as well as handling large aspects of telecommunication projects.:

Telecommunication: Our offices are well connected to each other with latest telecommunication technologies. High speed internet, high resolution webcams for video conferencing and high quality audio devices are dispensed to our customers at our premises to establish contact with the offshore teams. We advise our customers, who opting for the dedicated team setup, to utilize good communication technologies as a means to best duplicates real time communication.

Soft Skills and intercultural competence: In addition to quality telecommunication capabilities, it is also essential that the employees involved in offshore projects possess soft skills such as intercultural competence and proficiency in languages (especially for non-English speaking customers), willingness to adapt to the foreign mentalities, etc.,. At all of our locations, we offer our clients a staff that possesses such skills, and wants, to work in an international and intercultural context. We also recommend our customers to invest in equipping their own employees with these skills which might prove useful in the long run. We therefore offer seminars and consulting services towards achieving these ends.

IT-Project Management Techniques: Since the projects we deal with are mostly done in an international context, largely employed via telecommunication. It is very important, then, to undergo a very good requirements analysis, followed by the creation of detailed and objective technical and functional specifications documents, to achieve a high level of clarity and maturity in project management. The IT professionals involved in our projects are well-trained especially in these areas. Extending this to the management level out of the U.S. and Europe, the team that manages the projects from our onsite locations also possesses these skills. For clients who do direct offshoring, we provide support and also conduct seminars and consulting services in IT project management.

Dedicated Team For Small Projects

The dedicated team setup is suitable for both large and small projects alike, since determining the size of a project in general terms is very difficult to measure.

If a project involves a complete software product being developed by a few developers over a long period, or a large scale software product could be divided into different modules so that small teams develop their small part of the larger software with clear interface definitions between them, both these scenarios should not be discussed here. As we see just from these two open-ended examples, there are far too many project types and too many ways to execute a project.

What we emphasize here are the two basic forms of direct offshoring, one of which is the dedicated team setup. A basic example for the dedicated team setup is a small project with one domestic project manager (in Europe or the U.S.) supervises the dedicated team in India. In such cases, the developers, typically operating domestically, now are able to lead the project from a distance via telecommunication technologies and through project specification documents.

Dedicated Team Setup For Software-Offshoring in India

Dedicated Team for Large Projects

By large projects, we usually refer to those projects in which the scope of the software to be developed, the complexity in software or project design, the number of specialists to be consulted, etc., are high. The above factors are also very dependent on each other. Hence, when talking about large projects, it is the project organization that would be emphasized by us, rather than the size.

Large projects involve not one but several teams of developers. Under normal circumstances, this certainly requires a responsible party for all the teams as a whole. Typically one could imagine a constellation starting with a simple hierarchy on the client side in which a project manager supervise a number of team leaders who, in turn, lead one team each throughout the project. Due to project time constraints, it is also possible that the team leaders be put in charge of several teams, either simultaneously or one after the other, for specific functions such as documentation, software development or testing.

<small>Dedicated Team setup for Software-Offshoring in India</small>

If the size of the project reaches a level that can no longer be represented by the basic model described above, we can assume a simple extension to the basic model to describe the scenario. Normally, the project management is totally disconnected from the actual software development. This is because of two essential aspects to the project management of the entire project: the structural and technical planning of the project and regular project progress reports. In practice, these are normally under the responsibility of the domestic team.

There might be project setups in which there is not only a hierarchy of leadership on the client side but also one at the Comelio-Team in India. This is done in cases where improved and simplified communication between the client and the offshore team is necessary. Comelio provides assistance in such situations by setting up a contact person for a number of offshore teams or one contact person per team, or a project leader in charge of the team leaders offshore. This reduces the communication load between the client, in Europe or the U.S., and the Comelio Team in India through coordination and reporting conducted between the respective project and team leaders.

Within this setup, a large number of combinations are possible.The followin list contains several typical models:

Project manager or team leader from client's staff pool supervises several teams with Comelio-India

Project manager or team leader from client's staff pool gets a project manager from the domestic Comelio office as the contact person for the Indian team